On this day: November 6

2012: Tammy Baldwin becomes the first openly gay politician to be elected to the United States Senate. Baldwin, a Democrat who had represented Wisconsin's 2nd district in the U.S. House since 1999, defeated Republican nominee Tommy Thompson, who had formerly had served as Wisconsin governor and U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.

2010: Swiebodzin, Poland, announces the world's biggest statue of Jesus, called Christ the King, is completed. The concrete and fiberglass statue is 108-feet tall with a 10-foot-tall gilded crown, and, along with its mound, it reaches 172 feet overall.

2009: The government reports that unemployment rose to 10.2 percent in the U.S. in October, the first time the jobless rate had hit double digits since 1983.

2007: Country singer Hank Thompson, whose best known hits include "The Wild Side of Life," "Rub-a-Dub-Dub" and "Wake Up, Irene," dies of lung cancer at the age of 82.

2001: Britney Spears' album "Britney" is released. The album, featuring the singles "I'm a Slave 4 U" and "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman," would hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart.

1996: The drama "The English Patient," starring Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe and Kristin Scott Thomas, and directed by Anthony Minghella, premieres in Los Angeles. The movie would go on to win nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress for Binoche, and Best Director.

1995: Art Modell announces that he has signed a deal that would relocate the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore to become the Baltimore Ravens, the first time the city had a football team since 1983 when they were the Baltimore Colts. The outrage and controversy that erupted led to an agreement allowing Modell to move his team while relinquishing ownership of the Browns' name, colors, logos and history, paving the way for a new Cleveland Browns team that resumed play in 1999.

1991: Actress Gene Tierney, best remembered for her performance in the title role of "Laura" (pictured) and her Academy Award-nominated performance for Best Actress in "Leave Her to Heaven," dies of emphysema at the age of 70 in Houston, Texas. Tierney also had roles in movies such as "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir," "Heaven Can Wait" and "The Razor's Edge."

1991: Robert M. Gates becomes the 15th director of the CIA. Gates would also serve as U.S. secretary of defense between 2006 and 2011 under President George W. Bush.

1988: Actress Emma Stone, best known for roles in movies such as "Superbad," "Easy A," "Zombieland," "The Help" and "The Amazing Spider-Man," is born in Scottsdale, Arizona.

1984: U.S. President Ronald Reagan wins a landslide re-election over Democratic candidate Walter Mondale, capturing 49 states to Mondale's one (his home state of Minnesota) plus Washington, D.C. Reagan's 525 electoral votes is the highest total ever received by a presidential candidate, while Mondale's 13 electoral votes is the second-fewest ever received by a second-place candidate, second only to Alf Landon's eight in 1936.

1981: Fernando Valenzuela of the Los Angeles Dodgers becomes the first rookie to win a Cy Young Award, and the first player in MLB history to win both the Rookie of the Year and the Cy Young in the same season. Valenzuela won his first eight decisions for the Dodgers on his way to a 13-7 record, 2.48 ERA and a World Series championship.

1975: The English punk band the Sex Pistols make their debut, playing at Saint Martins College in London, England, in support of a pub rock group called Bazooka Joe. The Sex Pistols performed several cover songs, including The Who's "Substitute" and the Small Faces' "Whatcha Gonna Do About It," using Bazooka Joe's amps and drums. Before the band could play the few original songs they had written to date, Bazooka Joe members pulled the plugs as they saw their gear being trashed. A brief physical altercation between members of the two bands took place on stage, although the details of the fight are sketchy today. Here the band is seen during a 1977 performance.

1972: Actress Thandie Newton, best known for movies like "The Pursuit of Happyness," "Mission: Impossible II," "Crash" and "2012," is born in London, England.

1972: Actress and model Rebecca Romijn, best known for her role as Mystique in the "X-Men" films, and for her recurring role as Alexis Meade on the TV series "Ugly Betty," is born in Berkeley, California.

1971: The United States Atomic Energy Commission tests the largest U.S. underground hydrogen bomb, code-named Cannikin, on Amchitka Island in the Aleutian Islands off Alaska. The ground lifted 20 feet, caused by an explosive force almost 400 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. Here, the warhead used in the test is seen being lowered into the test shaft.

1970: Actor Ethan Hawke, best known for roles in movies such as "Dead Poets Society," "Reality Bites," "Before Sunrise" and "Training Day," is born in Austin, Texas.

1967: Phil Donahue begins his TV talk show, "The Phil Donahue Show," in Dayton, Ohio. The show, which was the first to use the daytime talk show format and would eventually become known simply as "Donahue," would run for three years locally before going on to a 26-year run as a nationally syndicated TV show.

1962: The United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution condemning South Africa's racist apartheid policies and calls for all U.N. member states to cease military and economic relations with the nation.

1956: President Dwight D. Eisenhower is re-elected, with the Republican incumbent defeating Democratic candidate Adlai E. Stevenson in a rematch of the 1952 election. Eisenhower overwhelmingly won a second term, carrying 41 states and garnering 57.4 percent of the popular vote and 457 electoral votes, compared to Stevenson's 42 percent and 73 electoral votes.

1955: Maria Shriver, journalist and the former first lady of California, as the then-wife of actor and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, is born in Chicago. Shriver is also a member of the Kennedy family, with her mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, a sister of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Edward Kennedy.

1948: Singer-songwriter Glenn Frey, best known as a founding member of The Eagles and for his solo work, is born in Detroit, Michigan.

1947: "Meet the Press" makes its television debut in a 30-minute, live press conference format. James A. Farley, the former postmaster general and former Democratic National Committee chairman, was the show's first guest. Despite bearing little resemblance to its original format, today the show is the longest-running television series in American broadcasting history. Pictured is the earliest photograph in existence of the show, featuring the Dec. 4, 1947, episode with U.S. Sen. Robert Taft as the show's guest.

1946: Actress Sally Field, whose rose to fame on TV in the 1960s on "Gidget" and as Sister Bertrille on "The Flying Nun," is born in Pasadena, California. Field is also known for roles in movies such as "Norma Rae" and "Places in the Heart" (for which she won Oscars for Best Actress) as well as "Sybil," "Smokey and the Bandit," "Steel Magnolias" and "Forrest Gump."

1944: Plutonium is first produced at the Hanford Atomic Facility in Washington state, home to the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world. Plutonium manufactured at the site would be used in the first nuclear bomb, tested at the Trinity site in New Mexico, and in "Fat Man," the bomb detonated over Nagasaki, Japan.

1935: Electrical engineer and inventor Edwin H. Armstrong announces his development of FM broadcasting. Rather than varying ("modulating") the amplitude of a radio wave to encode an audio signal, the new method varied the frequency. FM enabled the transmission and reception of a wider range of audio frequencies, as well as audio free of static, a common problem in AM radio.

1931: Film director Mike Nichols is born under the birth name Michael Igor Peschkowsky in Berlin, Germany. He is best known for directing movies such as "The Graduate" (for which he won an Oscar for Best Director), "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," "Silkwood," "Working Girl" and "Angels in America." Nichols died of heart attack at age 83 on Nov. 19, 2014.

1928: Arnold Rothstein, the head of the Jewish mob in New York City, dies at age 46 two days after being shot in an assassination attempt during a business meeting at Manhattan's Park Central Hotel. Rothstein was shot by George "Hump" McManus after refusing to pay a large gambling debt from a high-stakes poker game Rothstein claimed was fixed. Rothstein was widely reputed to have organized corruption in professional athletics, conspiring in the fixing of the 1919 World Series.

1928: Jacob Schick, who founded the Schick Dry Shaver, Inc., razor company, patents the first electric razor. His first electric razor required the use of two hands, one to hold the bulky engine, while the other hand held the whirling razor attached to the motor by a dangling cord.

1903: Actress June Marlowe, who appeared in six "Our Gang" short subjects as schoolteacher Miss Crabtree, is born Gisela Valaria Goetten in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Marlowe, who was also a prolific actress in silent films during the 1920s, retired from acting after marrying Hollywood businessman Rodney Sprigg in 1933. She died of complications from Parkinson's disease at age 80 on March 10, 1984.

1900: U.S. President William McKinley is re-elected, with the Republican incumbent beating William Jennings Bryan in a rematch of the 1896 election. McKinley garnered 51.6 percent of the vote and 292 electoral votes compared to Bryan's 45.5 percent and 155. McKinley would die following an assassination attempt in September 1901 less than a year into his second term as president and be succeeded by Vice President Theodore Roosevelt.

1893: Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, whose works are among the most popular concert and theatrical music in the classical repertoire, dies at the age of 53 in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

1888: U.S. Sen. Benjamin Harrison, a Republican from Indiana, beats President Grover Cleveland in his re-election bid, 233 electoral votes to 168. Despite losing the electoral vote, Democratic candidate Cleveland actually received slightly more popular votes in the election, garnering 48.6 percent of the vote to Harrison's 47.8 percent, making it the third of only four U.S. presidential elections in which the winner of the electoral college did not win the popular vote. The other three came in 1824, 1876 and 2000.

1887: Hall of Fame baseball pitcher Walter Johnson, one of the most celebrated and dominating players in baseball history, is born in Humboldt, Kansas. Johnson, who played his entire 21-year career for the Washington Senators, set several pitching records, some of which remain unbroken today. He still leads in all-time career shutouts with 110, is second in wins with 417 and fourth in complete games with 531. He also once held the career record in strikeouts with 3,508 and was the only player in the 3,000 strikeout club for more than 50 years until Bob Gibson joined him in 1974.

1869: In New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers College defeats Princeton University (then known as the College of New Jersey), 6-4, in the first official intercollegiate American football game. The game little resembled what we know today as American football, as there was no running with the ball, each team included 25 players and the ball was perfectly spherical. A week later, the two teams met again in a rematch, this time with Princeton winning 8-0.

1865: The CSS Shenandoah is the last Confederate combat unit to surrender after circumnavigating the globe on a cruise on which it sank or captured 38 vessels. The ship is notable for firing the last shot of the American Civil War, at a whaler in waters off the Aleutian Islands.

1861: Jefferson Davis, a former U.S. secretary of war and U.S. senator, is elected president of the Confederate States of America. He ran without opposition, and the election simply confirmed the decision that had been made by the Confederate Congress earlier in the year.

1861: James Naismith, the inventor of the game of basketball, is born in Ramsay Township (now part of Mississippi Mills, Ontario, Canada).

1860: Abraham Lincoln is elected to be the 16th president of the United States. Questions surrounding the expansion of slavery and the rights of slave owners had broken the Democratic Party into Northern and Southern factions, and a new Constitutional Union Party appeared, thus four candidates split the vote, with Republican Lincoln earning 39.8 percent of the vote for 180 electoral votes, compared to 29.5 percent for Democratic candidate Stephen A. Douglas, 18.1 percent for Southern Democrat John C. Breckenridge and 12.6 percent for Constitutional Union candidate John Bell. Before Lincoln's inauguration, seven Southern states seceded and formed the Confederacy, a precursor to the Civil War.

1854: Composer John Philip Sousa, known particularly for American military and patriotic marches, including "Semper Fidelis" (the official march of the U.S. Marine Corps) and "The Stars and Stripes Forever" (the National March of the United States of America), is born in Washington, D.C.

1814: Adolphe Sax, the musical instrument designer and musician who invented the saxophone, is born in Dinant, Wallonia, Belgium.

1789: Pope Pius VI appoints Father John Carroll as the first Catholic bishop in the United States.

1528: Spanish conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca becomes the first known European to set foot in Texas when he and a crew of 80 to 90 men are shipwrecked on what was probably Galveston Island.

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